Over on Twitter, @mynwexperience wrote that he was surprised that I thought the ramen at Minizo, the food cart, might be better than the version at Shigezo, its parent restaurant (as I wrote last Sunday).

@tdmrussell Need to go back to Shigezo. Went once and liked the ramen. Seems odd Minizo might be better. :)

To me, it makes perfect sense. After all, the best ramen in Japan tends to come from hole-in-the-wall spots with menus small enough to fit on a vending machine. In Tokyo, I found shops that served various types of ramen -- shoyu, shio, tonkotsu -- but beyond that, your options might include crisp gyoza, perhaps a frosty beer (which, by the way, ordering biru from a vending machine? That's pretty great) and not much else.

One of the things that struck me from the interviews with ramen chefs scattered like so much togarashi through Ivan Orkin's upcoming book, "Ivan Ramen" (Oct. 29, Ten Speed Press), is that ramen mastery comes from repetition: countless days waking up to prepare the broth, endless perfection of something as simple as laying noodles in a bowl.

So it stands to reason that Minizo, which serves shoyu (soy sauce broth), shio (salt broth) and abu (brothless) ramen varieties, as well as tonkatsu (breaded, fried pork cutlet) and a few other Japanese dishes, including, recently, takoyaki (battered, fried octopus balls), would make a better, more consistent bowl than Shigezo, which has dozens and dozens of items on its menu. (My colleague David Sarasohn even compared Shigezo to a New Jersey diner in his 2011 review.)

Since I lost the ramen hunt scent after its brief, electric run this spring, I figured I'd post some photos of Minizo's ramen and explain why I like it.

View full sizeMinizo's noodles, firm, thin but not too thin and mostly straight.Michael Russell, The Oregonian

Pictured at top is Minizo's shoyu ramen, with its characteristic dark broth (in the background are the takoyaki and a Bitburger pilsner from Prost! -- taking food into the adjacent German beer bar is a nice perk). Like the shio version, which has a clearer broth, it comes with sweet chashu (slow simmered, soy-marinated pork slices), a hard-boiled egg (you can sub a soft boiled version for free), bean sprouts and scallions.

Minizo makes their own noodles, and they're good, even very good: thin but not too thin, mostly straight and perfectly firm.

Overall, Minizo makes a great everyday bowl, not quite as good as Biwa, perhaps, but at least on part with if not a step above Mirakutei.